Introduction into seduction
by Triyune
Summary: Bruce Wayne meets the Joker, the Joker meets Bruce Wayne and they are having quite a moment figuring out what is actually happening.
1. Chapter 1

**Introduction into seduction**

The Joker was running three clubs in Gotham. The Batman had been knowing about that for years already but he let him keep them since his informants were partyholics and subculture freaks of all sorts, neither missing the best nor the strangest acts of Gotham and since the Joker had a taste which matched theirs they frequently visited him and thus were never short of relevant info about the Joker's potential hideouts, deals and newest plans.

On the first Friday of the month, he was said to host the F20.3 party in his fetish club, on the next Friday of the month, he did the Rolling Dices in his hipster club and on the third Friday he personally took care of the events of the Circus. On the last Friday of the month, no one knew what he did.

Bruce Wayne got ready on the first Friday, knowing what he had to expect and dressing appropriately, which turned out more difficult than he had hoped it would since Alfred didn't possess any leather pants either and his pair didn't fit him anymore. Consternated, he decided for a slim fit business suit and a black shirt. They'd allow him to enter that way as well, he was sure. To be very sure, he added a black tie and a black ring with a smaller ring on it, his ace.

He then put in contact lenses and for the first time in his life, dyed his hair with a semi-permanent, black hair colour. The slight change from dark brown to black turned out to be more of a change than expected and he was bewildered by the result. He felt confident.

Alfred was shocked to see his master like that but he just gave him a suggestive smile. If he had known with what kind of intentions his master was visiting the club he would have tried to keep him from leaving the house with Vietnam karate.

The Joker was talking to a man with a pad and pen in his hands, hurrying to note everything down, mostly things like '20 bottles of A.R., 40 balls of P.D, a new table, 6 bananas, check the alcohol, po-'

"What?"

"Poppers!" the Joker screamed, trying to be louder than the deafening sound of the music.

"Seriously, boss?"

The Joker dealt him an annoyed look.

"Do I look like someone who enjoys joking?"

The man clenched his teeth, keeping himself from an answer which would have sent him straight below the grass roots. In order to distract his boss from the fact that HELL, YES, he did look like someone who didn't only enjoy making jokes but also making _bad_ jokes, he stared at the pad and wrote down 'Popperz'.

The Joker turned to check the location for other missing pieces. His eyes met with someone's. A man was sitting by a table in front of the bar, those tables with the comfortable leather chairs. He had his legs crossed, one arm lying on the armrest, the other holding a Martini glass, his eyes gleaming in the dark of that laser- and lightless spot he had chosen to occupy.

The Joker went back to looking at the furnishings.

"See, over there, the chair is broken. A table and chair then. Well, what else...Pearl needs a new string, blue...and..."

He turned his head, his eyes searching for the man.

There he was, still looking back. Their eyes met again and for a second, he felt out of his mind.

Gone.

The bass hammered through his body, forcing his heart to beat fervently against the threatening rhythm of that 175bpm song; millions of dust particles made up of dead skin, keratin and diesel slowly sinking to the ground around him, not hurrying to fall but eagerly and consequently moving towards the floor; the black furnishing and floor around him merging into one rubbery, tarlike organism, breathing, moving, reacting to the touch it was given by hundreds of stomping feet of visitors, those visitors, mere shades of lighter and darker greys, losing their faces, their individual scents, their peculiarities and turning into one grey mass, solidarizing with the furnishings, taken up in the tarry mass and dissolving.

The man in the chair blinked and reality fell down on him again. Like a very wet wave of ocean water, it left him cold and shivering. Yet, they opened up to him again, tiny dots of vast blackness.

Bit by bit, he felt himself being pulled into the small, black center of his eyes, his jacket already coming apart at the seam. He couldn't help it; his central nervous system was about to do an emergency shutdown to protect him from permanent damage but curiosity fought tooth and nail against it, consuming all resources of mental power and activity and almost triggering the emergency power aggregate into activity.

The blackness consumed him, winding and writhing in the space between them, seeping into his body, forcing him to open his mouth, slightly and so very slowly that he didn't even notice. And there it was, quenching his heart, stifling dissent, choking all emotions, drowning his brain in a warm, sticky liquid, compressing the arteries and escaping through the only gate which wasn't locked.

Martini spread on the man's lips and his tongue darted out to lick them clean.

That was all he needed to implode.

For not more than a second, a smile flashed over his face only to disappear in the depths of that all-consuming blackness. That broke the spell. He turned his head around and faced his handmaid who was patiently waiting for him to return to earth. He was used to that kind of behaviour and didn't question it anymore. Yes, he had also given up telling him that it would be better if he went to see a neurologist or some other therapist of any sort, no specific one, just an –ist, preferably a behavioural therapist or a respiratory therapist, didn't really-

"Leave me alone"

Yes, he was also used to that. When the Joker had a moment he'd rather not interfere.

So he left.

The Joker himself started to move. While doing so, he put on a bold face, eyebrows slightly lifted, a hint of a derisive smile giving him an air of being above such things. He went straight towards the man who didn't change his expression at all but just followed him with his eyes.

Unceremoniously, he passed him and went to the bar.

The man's eyes went back to looking at the stage to his left. He didn't perceive what was going on there although he was looking at the scenery. He was clearly lost in thoughts.

Just when he was about to catch one, finally, the Joker passed him again, holding two solid, heavy whiskey glasses in one of his hands and carrying a bottle with clear liquid in his other.

He placed the glasses on the table without looking at the man and poured them a drink. He clinked his glass with the other still on the table and leaned back, finally cast up his eyes, directly meeting the other man's. He downed the gin with one gulp and refilled his glass and only then the other man took a sip from his as well.

Nutmeg. Myristica fragrans. A bit too much of it and the F20.3 theme party would pretty much explain itself to one. But those were just rumours.

Casually, they leaned in their chairs, evaluating their positions, making speculations, drawing comparisons and contemplating on further actions.

Yet, it never came to those.

Both had emptied their glasses and another round followed. Quietly, they sat there, feeling the vibrations of the music attacking their chairs, their hands getting moist from the leather armrest and their bodies giving in to the phenomenon of a chair you once sat down on and never would get up from again. At least, not deliberately.

A kind of heaviness had spread within them, gluing their bottoms to their seats and their eyes to each other's.

Severe dissociative symptoms.

The black hair of the man merged with the background of the occasion; the liquid which disappeared between two strands of dainty flower petals was rich and had a sharp taste, like a well grounded blade it slid down their throats, leaving sore flesh behind. Polished words swam in it, so many that not even one of them could be said but they reverberated in the ears of both of them, making them listen to a dialogue they never held.

Firmly, their fingers held the glasses, so desperately and firmly that one would think they would drop and fall into a bottomless pit if they ever let go of them again. Free fall without a chute. Their knuckles were turning white from the strain but their minds never noticed.

And then, one moved, bent forward, took the world with him and poured himself another drink. Another journey, another time, another trip, another chance.

He fell back into place and connected again, his pits of darkness inviting the other man to take his hand and enter them again. And he did; he leaned forward, added more gin and disappeared in the chair again, accepting the request.

Something settled between them, they couldn't tell what it was but they could clearly feel it. It seized hold of them and they resisted the urge to get up. When they had managed to kill their needs space opened up to more space and time unfolded into infinity. A moment, no more, no less.

The first question they asked themselves was whether they could, only to be followed by the second question whether they would; directly related to the first question but not necessarily depending on its answer. After another two glasses they found out that there was a third, even more dangerous question looming ahead.

Both of them ignored it for now, devoting themselves to the delicate distance between them. Sometimes, they seemed to look at each other from far far away and then again, it seemed like they could barely be any closer at all despite not moving at all.

The liquid was almost empty; three more glasses and there would just be a greasy, potent film left on the inside of the bottle.

"Boss, Barkridge wants to talk to ya."

His eyes didn't leave his prey. The waiter was just standing by, waiting for him to say or do something which, as he knew, could take quite a while when the Joker was having a moment. And he did have a moment. A very vast and extensive one.

The other man didn't look at the waiter either. There was only one direction.

"Coming," the Joker said monotonously and got up. His eyes only left the man when he walked past him finally.

Emptiness spread. Threatening, undeniable and inescapable. The man shifted slightly.

Disorientation, spatial and temporal, temporarily.

He stared at the spot in front of him and begged for the darkness to leave him, for the emptiness to be filled up. Instead, he decided to fill himself up with more of that liquid.

Some time later, he failed to tell whether it was minutes, decades of minutes or millions of minutes, something rushed past him, carrying a scent he knew.

Another minute later, the space was taken and green eyes settled for blackness again. He felt safe; by then, he had doubted his return strongly. A second bottle was opened the contents generously poured into the glasses.

Barely quarter of the bottle was empty when their looks started to become a little unfocused. The music grew louder and both had to squint against the lasers which seemed to have turned much brighter all of a sudden. People, scents, feelings and all other sorts of mysteries tried to penetrate their skins and reach through to their brains but there was just one thing claiming their minds.

That third question had become tangible.

And then, when the question was about to be answered, he decided to break the spell.

He got up, not without staggering from the ridiculous concentration of alcohol in his blood and most vital organ, his brain, which worked hard to overcome that concrete intoxication without permanent damage. Since that labour took most of its capacity it couldn't bother to coordinate the next few actions for that silly fool at all and so he flounced past the man, dealing him another last look together with a smug smile and the following words:

"Sorry, pal. I'm straight."

When he was past the man, having taken the mist of cold smoke with him, he rose the corners of his mouth for a grin as well.

He took his glass, gulped down the gin and then got up as well just to sit down again. His legs wouldn't do him the favour of carrying him at all so he stayed there for another minute until he started the second attempt. More or less, more less than more, he managed to get up, wondering why just slightly more than half a litre of gin had killed his senses so effectively when he believed in himself to be an inveterate drunkard, spending quite some time getting drunk at his own parties just in order to push his tolerance threshold.

Pondering over the mystery of ethanol, he stumbled towards the exit of the location.

The other man watched him from some distance; his smile had faded meanwhile. He almost regretted his remark at the end a little, fearing that he would take it too seriously.

Question three was crouching behind him like a hungry beast smelling cornflakes right in front of it and already opening its mouth to eat them up. With a considerable amount of confusion in his eyes he looked up since he thought he had felt something dripping on his head.

He remembered then that he might have had one too many. However, he thought that he should be used to that since he believed in himself to be an inveterate drunkard, spending quite some time getting drunk at his own parties just in order to push his tolerance threshold.

The man disappeared behind the veil of the outer world.

He noticed a sudden drop in body temperature and felt cold.

Confusion is mandatory.

The man stepped outside into the cold air which sobered him up immediately, but not enough to be able to walk home on his own, so he got himself a taxi. Finally safely seated in the back of it, he told the driver to get him to Wayne Manor. Musing about his encounter with a brain currently running on nothing more than alcohol and some blood, he considered it a success and smiled smugly.

The man left behind in the club still stood at the same place, looking at the door. He still felt cold.

The tune of a song he knew suddenly brought him back to the club. He turned his head and listened for the known chords. They made the warmth return.

Considerably drunk, he started to move and hit the wall. A second attempt brought him to the tables, a third attempt to the stairs and a fifth attempt up the stairs. He wondered how that man would get home. Those fine, silky black suit pants would meet the leather cushions of a taxi now, most presumably.

The door of his private room went shut and he fell down on the bed, thinking. His head was spinning from the alcohol but that wasn't his most pressing trouble.

No name, no number, no voice.

But darn it, why should he have asked? He was straight.


	2. Solstice

**Solstice**

His person came into view, manifold like waves, he spread towards me like a warm, gentle ocean with waves surging in timescape.

He opened his eyes and space came into being, right in front of my eyes, exploding in one big bang like the beginning of the universe. Stars, millions of stars glistened in the milky waves of this parallelic universal sea.

They radiated a light so warm that it made the ice melt in my soul. Long lashes moved through the air, taking worlds with them, lifting them up and sending them into the black skies lingering on his forehead, his hair.

It bore the tear of a god. Slowly, a drop of transparent, lucid water mingled with salt travelled a strand of blackness down towards his eyebrow. When it was about to part with the strand it slightly changed its form, becoming more conic. A world was mirroring itself in it, his soul, compressed to a single drop of water, atoms fuelled by the heat of his passion, vibrating in the frequency of his heartbeat, modulating the tiny world's reality.

It lost contact and freed itself, sliding down the hilly surface of his forehead skin, laid in wrinkles. The trail of soul particles the drop left shimmered in the faint light.

Striving towards fusion with the bigger self, it descended, still, and finally, touching the safe haven and spreading in the fine black hair of his eyebrows, returned home.

Below that forest there was resting another drop, going deeper than the other. It was black and stretched, like a tunnel, into nothingness, since there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It stretched into the void of a world where the sun was carefully wrapped in a fine net of cotton wool. The changes on its surface were hypnotizing, going from dark red to orange and moving into yellowish white. This was the core, the heart of the sun.

Erupting into the void around it, it set the rhythm for the mind and the physical body.

It was warm there. Until it turned cold. He closed his eyes and took the world from me. I couldn't wait for him to open them again to give me back that space.

He returned them to me, these deep black tunnels going into something he wouldn't show to anyone.

A sudden move made me lose contact again; it was replaced by something which invited me to take another journey and explore that matter he was made of.

White, smooth and clear, his teeth emerged out of the dainty peachy rose which framed them now, touching them so gently and lovingly. It was a sharp contrast to the darkest black I had ever seen before in his eyes. Anti-matter.

They moved upwards, like barriers releasing a stream of nothingness.

He smiled.

Refocusing, I suddenly saw the whole thing, the totality.

The black skies, raining, releasing drop after drop which fell down to disappear in the depth of the black, which, connecting with that nothingness between white purity and rosy flesh, made the atmosphere for the small, warm sun at the core.

Surprising, how such a small sun could move this body.

His world was shaken by an extraordinarily heavy eruption of this tiny sun. Passion assembled in the blackness and travelled the way into being, through his mouth. His tongue darted out to reach me.

The essence of his mind and his soul, materialized in his body, touched me. Immediately, two worlds shared information, inferred, then deducted and finally concluded, that yes, the matter was compatible, thus, fusionable. Thereupon, they gave up tension and submitted themselves to each other, merging under nervous convulsions, atoms fired by the heat of their passions, until they became one organism.

Moving in the warm caverns of a sacred place, they danced to the rhythm of the solar eruptions taking place in both bodies, finally having tuned in and vibrating in the same beat.

Then, the rest of the heavy, sluggish mass moved together. One single beat in the universe. Heated, solid but pliable strings of energy moved it. When they touched, they rekindled the small suns and they fed on it, growing, becoming larger, larger and lighter until they were rotating, gleaming balls of light. It sparked their minds to transcendence and so they did, moving beyond the blackness, the void, to a holy, old place.

It was older than anything else; it had been there already before anything else had been and it had preserved itself over the trillions of years. It was pure, purer than anything else which had ever come into being.

Unchangeable, unalterable and unmutable, it was there, protected by stone walls of unconscious matter, waiting for the moment to be freed.

Love.

Their suns touched and fused, the power of that eruption shook the stones and broke the walls. As their suns' rays touched that inside it disploded. The energy which was set free went through solid and liquid mass, changing their beat. It surfaced in a ripple of laughter. The reaction was unexpected.

Something moved. Awoken by a call no one would have thought it would be heard or even pronounced at all, it opened up. Streams of pure life sought to push their way through dry canals, bringing life with them, bringing ecstasy with them. Small, delicate tendrils unfolded to receive this precious gift by the heart, greedily sucking in the liquid.

It stretched, it grew and elongated, focused energy and corresponding matter. A surging sea of different colour than the black deluged the forgotten places with life until they were full and fit.

All mass was moving in perfect unison, their suns pulsating in synchronicity, their fingers spinning around each other in a magic and secret dance, tracing paths and unravelling knots of tension, leaving healed wounds behind. Respectfully and tenderly, they explored each other, careful not to hurt but to soothe. Their touch set the surging sea in motion every time anew; sensation interpreted by the tactile processors sent along to the pulsing, gleaming sun to stimulate another outburst.

It was more than I could take.

Energy, so vivid and so pressing that it could barely be held anymore had gathered in it, seeking release.

Fingers, like salvation itself, lay down on it, burying doubts, grief and regrets under a warm layer of warm liquid, spreading. One single drop.

The feeling it left for the sun was sui generis. Experiencing that for the first time, it sent out one strong throb which reverberated in his entire body, flooding his veins, his arteries and his blood vessels with a kind of matter which was searing hot, almost burning him inside.

When it reached the top it broke through.

Everything lost its meaning. A moment of profound nothingness, centering around a small, craving soul, pounding so hard at the sensation of this totally unknown feeling that it shook the entire body. Outer substance and inner space merged and he felt the intense embrace of another world.

It corroded the imperfections. It washed away the pain. It spilt and took it all with it, only leaving immense plains of wavering bliss behind. A light so bright that it could not be perceived shone down on it. It irritated his eyes, he opened them and it made a single tear assemble in the corner of his open eye.

In complete silence, it departed and streamed down his glowing cheek, intensifying the heat.

Compassion touched it gently and kissed it away.

The sun turned brighter, so bright that it turned everything into nonexistence.

At the moment of being torn apart, he exhaled and choked the sun. It would have ripped him apart and he couldn't take it.

The man opened his eyes. He was still sitting there like before, looking back at him. But he had changed. The colour of his suit had changed, the surface of his skin had changed, the center of his eyes had changed, the fuel on which his mind and soul was running had changed.

Paralyzed by the awareness of an entirely new world, he gazed back. He would need some time to accustom himself to this world he had just discovered. And he needed some time for himself.

With stiff legs and a scorching heat between them he got up from the chair, faltering. It shook his world, but not hard enough. It could never be shaken hard enough anymore for this sensation to be forgotten again.

He dealt him one last look, the sun pulsing hard and making him get in touch with the eyes of the other man for one more time. The memories of a moment out of time and space pushed through and formed a smug smile on his face.

"Sorry, pal. I'm straight."

He rushed into the darkness looming around him, waiting to swallow him up and he disappeared, leaving the other man behind.

The thoughts which were whirling in his mind didn't allow him to get some rest. As his core was starting to turn a little colder again, colder but never cold again, he shivered with loss. He had never noticed that he had been cold before. Only now at seeing the warmth he knew what coldness felt like.

Shaken to the core of his self, he climbed the steps to his room. His mind was empty and though, his thoughts racing. He fell down on the bed, drained, though restless.

He had not heard the sound of his voice. He had not been given a note with numbers which he could dial and he had been deprived of the most vital connecting link between his experience and reality.

A name.

Why should he have asked...

The third question had just materialized into electric stimulation, being translated into something like an admitting confession.

He had tried so hard to ignore that thought after having noticed how devastating the answer to the first two questions had been. And he had managed to push it away during his presence. However, now that he was gone, it pushed itself on him.

He closed his eyes and turned to the side.

Gone.

He felt troubled because he knew that he would never forget this moment.


End file.
